With a derby legend and one of the biggest names in Newcastle’s history – a formula that we came up with for our Big Derby Discussion featuring Malcolm Macdonald and Black Cats favourite Julio Arca.

With Town Centre Citreon supporting our first ever derby round-table, we got them in front of a camera and the conversation rolled.

We wanted to get to grips with the big issues surrounding the game – and get under the skin of the derby with two men who have felt the white-hot passion and fervour of the Tyne-Wear rivalry. And it made for a fascinating half-an-hour in the company of two men who talked everything from why Newcastle can’t buy a win in this fixture to why Kevin Phillips is like Jimmy Greaves, and how Aleksandar Mitrovic and Georginio Wijnaldum might be the ones to snap the Magpies out of their disastrous derby day run.

Newcastle United Editor Mark Douglas, Sunderland writer James Hunter, Arca and Chronicle columnist SuperMac had plenty to say on the discussion – and we’ll be running it over four days in the run-up to the big game.

James: If you look at the form you have to say Newcastle are the favourites but Newcastle’s form has only just picked up itself. And if you look at the derby form in isolation, Sunderland are the team that are dominating and have been for the last two or three years.

Sunderland have to look at this as the game that can kick-start their season.

SuperMac: Personally I have a theory that there are so many foreign players that they don’t understand the significance of what the derby is all about. It’s something British players love, it’s a blood and guts situation and I’m not sure it suits the guys that come in from abroad. There’s one or two British players in Newcastle’s team, Colback, for example, and it’ll mean more to him than to anyone else because he’s switched camps and he wants to get out there and kick the backsides of every Sunderland official, player and coach in the stadium!

Julio: It’s right what Malcolm says. My first derby was in Newcastle and we won 2-1 but I didn’t really have any idea about the support and what it was until the second derby, when we played back at home and I saw the fans there, 48,000 there and ‘Wow’.

SuperMac: And the atmosphere rises 50% on any other game, doesn’t it?

Julio: Of course. And over the course of the year you realise what it can do for the city and the team you play for.

Yes, some foreign players take a little longer to realise what it means to play Newcastle or Sunderland. The fans, honestly, they forget about the rest of the fixtures. But in the derby it doesn’t matter what happens in the rest of the fixtures. That’s the nature of it.

Yes, Newcastle won the last game but their situation isn’t the best and I think it’s going to be a very close game.

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SuperMac: I usually look at these kind of games and think there is one way to gauge it and that’s fairly soon after the first whistle. I ask myself: Who wins the first tackle?

I mean a real, full-blooded tackle. And it’s usually Cattermole!

Mark: I was going to say Cattermole - that tackle in 2012 changed the game.

SuperMac: It lifts the Sunderland players all around him because he’s rattled into a tackle, he’s left a Newcastle player holding his shin or whatever. And from there Sunderland have the edge on the game and it’s only for them to lose it.